Last Dinner + My Thoughts on Going Vegan

Well, today wasn?t as hard as I thought it would be!

I had some almonds + dried apricots around 3 this afternoon, and then some Amazing Grass + almond milk at 4:30 to get me through the end of the work day.

Dinner?I wasn?t so sure how it would turn out.

It wasn?t that I thought it would taste bad ? I just didn?t know how it would work without cheese.

My meal plan for this week included quesadillas ? and you kinda? need cheese to hold everything together.

Or maybe you don?t!

I had planned on making roasted kabocha + bean quesadillas with this spicy jack cheese, but those plans got changed a bit on Saturday when neither grocery store had kabocha! The nerve.

I bought 2 sweet potatoes instead and decided they would work fine.

Everything else in my plan stayed the same, except I just didn?t put cheese in mine.

And I think it turned out to be a great vegan / vegetarian meal!

For the quesadilla filling, I diced 2 sweet potatoes and coated them with some grapeseed oil, ancho chile powder, cumin, and salt and roasted them in the oven at 450 for about 35-40 minutes.

While the potatoes were cooking, I got everything else ready.

After the potatoes were cooked, I layered some potatoes and pinto beans (plus avocado and scallion for me) in between 2 tortillas and let it crisp up in the pan. Flip it once, cut, and serve!

It was so good! I loved the spices on the potatoes with the avocado chunks and beans.

I had a few renegade beans and potato chunks that tried to escape mine, but it held together pretty well without the cheese! I think it would have been even better had I mashed the beans a bit or if the avocado was ripe enough to just mash into the tortillas.

All in all, it was a good meal! Even Nick said he liked it.

I?m actually feeling a bit hungry now, so I?m pretty sure I?ll be having some of my microwave popcorn tonight 

Being vegan for a day was much easier than I thought it would be. Which is interesting to me since I?m not even a vegetarian.

I thought it would be a fun challenge to take on, and it was! It made me be more creative with what I put together for meals today, and I?m always up for coming up with new ideas.

I think this would be an interesting challenge for everyone to take on at some point in their lives, just to see how much we (as a country) rely on animal products and to find out that you can go through an entire day without them.

I don?t think I?ll be going vegan anytime soon, but it definitely gave me a lot to think about. I?ve actually cut most dairy from my diet in the past few months, mostly because I was trying to figure out if that?s what was causing some of my stomach issues. I mean, I used to have a glass of milk with breakfast every morning! Now, if I have something, it?s yogurt or maybe a little cheese?and every now and then, ice cream

Even though I am still a meat eater, I do try to get as many things locally that I can and buy meat/dairy from places that treat their animals humanely. 

I think just knowing how the food system here works and doing whatever you can to help is a good thing.

That may mean being vegan.

It may mean supporting all your local farmers, no matter what they produce.

It could be eating ethically as often as possible.

I think the biggest thing is to figure out what works for you, in every aspect of your life.

No diet is perfect for everyone, and I think as long as you give it thought and figure out what you want to do to keep yourself healthy and happy, that?s all you need.

I can say that I?m happy I did this! Thanks to everyone that promoted this and all the others that went vegan for a day.

And I?m out ? I?ve got popcorn to eat and football/The Office to watch!

Did you go vegan today? What did you think?